The figure answered only by putting its finger to its lips, and seemed to be imploring silence. Andrew let go his hold, and began to look attentively at it. The long hair, the neck, and brown half-naked bosom showed it to be a woman, but she was not a native of the country; her face was sunburnt, and bespoke suffering; her wide cheekbones stuck out over her shrunken cheeks; her narrow eyes were cut obliquely, with the outer corner raised. The more Andrew looked at her features, the more he found in them something which he knew. At last he could not refrain from asking, "Tell me, who art thou? It seems to me that I know thee, or have seen thee somewhere." "Two years ago, in Kieff." "Two years ago--in Kieff!" repeated Andrew, endeavouring to bring to mind all that his memory had retained of his collegian's life. He took once more an attentive survey of her, and suddenly exclaimed aloud, "Thou art the Tartar! the servant of that lady! of the voevoda's daughter!" "Hush!" said the Tartar, imploringly, folding her hands, shuddering in all her frame, and at the same time turning her head to see that no one had been awakened by the shriek of Andrew. "Tell me--tell me--why--wherefore art thou here?" said Andrew in a whisper almost choked, and interrupted at every moment by his internal agitation; "where is the lady? is she alive?" "She is now in the town." "In the town?" exclaimed he, again almost shrieking aloud, and he felt that all his blood rushed at once to his heart. "Why is she in the town?" "Because the lord, her father, is there; it is now more than a year that he has been voevoda[26] in Doobno." "Well--is she married? Speak! how strange thou art! Say--what is she now?" "She has not eaten for two days." "How is that?" "For a long time not one of the citizens has had a piece of bread; it is long since they were all eating earth." Andrew remained speechless. "The lady saw thee among the Zaporoghians from the town wall. She said to me, 'Go, tell the knight that if he recollects me he will come to me; and if not, that he will give thee a morsel of bread for my old mother, for I cannot see my mother die before my eyes. Let me rather die first and she afterwards. Entreat him--embrace his knees and his feet. He, too, may have an old mother, for her sake he must give a bit of bread.'" Many and different were the feelings that awakened and stirred in the young Cossack's breast. "But how art thou here? How didst thou come?" "By a subterranean passage." "Is there any subterranean passage, then?" "Yes." "Where?" "Thou wilt not betray me, knight?" "No; I swear by the holy cross!" "Behind the ravine, after crossing the rivulet, where there are some reeds growing." "And it leads straight into the city?" "Straight into the cloister of the city." "Let us go! let us go directly!" "But, in the name of Christ and of his holy mother, a loaf of bread?"